This paragraph in particular put a chill down my spine.  I've often had a feeling that the newer generations will wonder what this concept of "privacy" was, and why some people thought it was so important--and by that point, privacy will be simply an abstract idea and not something that exists anymore.

I never thought of bitcoin as being an enemy of the state, any state.  I never figured it would overthrow the banking system or any of that, so I haven't exactly become disillusioned with it as time has passed. 

Anyway you laid out your thoughts pretty well, OP. 

Yeah, so?  Bitcoin would be nowhere near as popular as it is if it didn't offer the possibility of making a profit.  That's a good thing.  If bitcoin were a stablecoin, pretty much nobody would be using it as long as they were still able to use cash, their smartphone, or a debit card.

Frankly, I don't think any extraordinary measures are going to have to be taken for us to interact with each other like we did before the coronavirus outbreak--though I'm sure this whole situation has created a lot of new germaphobes who weren't that way to begin with.  We're going to have to keep up good hand-washing practices and not touch our faces so much and not sneeze or cough indiscriminately, but face masks and physical distancing won't be necessary (IMO....but we'll see).

It'll take a while before life starts getting back to normal, but I have confidence that it's going to happen.  Hopefully people will be able to return to the jobs they had during the shutdown, and--even more importantly--the economy won't be as damaged as many analysts predict.  That's the main thing I worry about.

1) Governments were never going to allow crypto to remain in its Wild West state.  Never.  I'm actually surprised that there aren't more rules and restrictions than there currently are.  In a lot of ways, we're still in the early days of crypto.

2)  Exchanges aren't requiring KYC docs because they want to (as far as I know).  They're doing that because they're being forced to by the governments in whose jurisdictions they operate.  Exchanges don't have a choice, and I can't fault them for implementing KYC.

3)  I don't know what you mean by developers requesting to make themselves public.

4)  Yeah, there's a lot of that "cult of personality" in the crypto space, which I don't particularly care for.  I'm not interested in personalities and generally don't believe anything people have to say--even less so when they have a "big" name attached to their words.

The community doesn't have a lot of choice as far as the regs governments put in place, and it's unfortunate that there isn't a big political crypto lobby like large corporations have.  And as far as the 4th point is concerned, I've found my own solution to that (see above).

Yikes, the movie industry really is in a slump, isn't it?  Ah well, that's only temporary.  Those Hollywood schmucks will be back to their shenanigans and the cranking out of mediocre (at best) flicks that aren't worth renting. 

I wouldn't have thought Monero would be a good subject for a film, given how privacy coins really haven't caught on like a lot of people thought they would--and it mystifies me why that's the case, because I know a lot of crypto users do actually care about privacy and you'd think they'd be going ga-ga over coins like Monero, PIVX, Dash, and a couple of others.  But in any case, I may have to put the Monero movie on my to-watch list.  Seem like it would be interesting.

It's a Zerohedge article, bro.  What kind of insubstantial end-of-the-world nonsense do you expect from that site?

And since it's from ZH, I'm not clicking on the link or reading it.  I know I'm not alone and that other members have the same reaction to articles they publish.  Maybe it would be better if you quoted some pertinent snippets for those of us unwilling to give ZH clicks.

In any case, we're not approaching the end of capitalism.  It's alive and well and will survive and thrive when other economic systems go bust.  Why?  Because it allows ownership of property and the potential to create wealth.  It's certainly not a perfect system by any means, but it's a hell of a lot more attractive than some of the alternatives.

OP, there's no one coherent, logical thread running through your post, which seems to be just a mish-mash of bullish sentiment and wishful thinking.

And I don't know how long OP's been around, but people have been proclaiming bitcoin is headed for the grave since well before I got interested in crypto in 2014.  The cries get louder and more frequent when there's an actual bear market (and I'm not sure if what we're in right now qualifies as one). 

Anyway, the best thing I can say about bitcoin right now is that at least it didn't get absolutely shredded in the market like crude oil did.  And even though it's still a ways away from even $10k, I have a feeling it'll get there.  The coronavirus thing cocked everything up, and bitcoin wasn't exempt.

You made a leap of logic there that I don't agree with. 

Think about the flu pandemic of 1918, which was far more deadly than COVID-19 and was presumably faster-spreading as well.  Does that mean that there are people actively trying to spread it?  No.  Viruses have always done exactly what the coronavirus is doing now, and it can still spread regardless of all these precautions we're taking.  I think it's veering off into coo-coo land conspiracy theories when you start to think that there are powerful (and malicious) folks behind this outbreak. 

But go for it.  If you can find those evil people, feel free to name names and expose their plot to....do whatever it is you think they can accomplish by getting people infected with a virus that causes mild cold symptoms in about 80% of those who get infected.

Eh, check the 10-year charts of gold, silver, bitcoin, stock indexes, and whatever else you're looking to see if there's a correlation present among them.  I haven't done this myself, but just asserting that gold reacted like bitcoin after some Trump statements (which were probably moronic anyway) isn't a rigorous analysis.

Gold and bitcoin might be acting similarly lately, but other assets have bounced back from the beginning month of the COVID-19 outbreak, which just tells me that money has started to pout back into the markets and investors might be getting a little bit less fearful of what's to come (and we'll see about that).

Interesting table of data, I must say.  I was thinking briefly about the Winklevoss twins a few weeks ago, wondering if they were still into bitcoin and idly wondering how much they owned--and assuming this data is correct, wow.  That's a lot. 

Those folks on the list probably want bitcoin to skyrocket, but usually individuals with wealth like they seem to have aren't in a rush.  Usually it's the small-time speculator looking to make a profit on quick trades that's more interested in the day-to-day (and sometimes minute-to-minute fluctuations in bitcoin's price).

I'm not a wealthy man now, and I still wouldn't be if bitcoin hit that mark.  I'm optimistic that it will get there eventually, but I assume it's going to be a few more years.

I think you're getting way too excited about the halving, which, even if we didn't have the coronavirus outbreak clouding things this time around, wouldn't have people blowing kazoos whilst they threw ticker tape out windows in celebration.  Halvings just don't produce those kind of celebrations even in the best of time.

I'm guessing bitcoin will be in the $7-8k range at the time of the halving, and I'm not expecting any huge gains this time around.  There's too much economic uncertainty and a lot of people have sold off investments (stocks, metals, bitcoin, and whatever else) to free up cash in order to weather the storm the virus has caused.  There are a ton of people who are still out of work and don't know when they'll be returning to their jobs, if at all.  All that's put a huge damper on investment.

But we'll see.  I tend to be surprised at what the market does--usually after I've made a prediction (lol).

I'm not so sure about your initial premise, that this sharp drop in oil prices has had an independent effect on the stock market.  I don't really follow what the major indexes are doing (like the Dow, S&P 500, etc.) but the big pharmaceutical stocks I do follow have been doing pretty well, and I don't think stocks have gotten hit anywhere near as hard as oil has.

It's not the stock or oil markets which are going to affect bitcoin.  It's the underlying factors that affect all markets, i.e, the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak and society's reaction to it.  Bitcoin has done much better than I initially thought it would, though there's no telling whether that's going to hold.  If society starts reopening businesses and people start getting back to work, that ought to help oil, stocks, and probably bitcoin as well.

Um, yeah....you seriously need to get your facts straight before putting your fingers to your keyboard.

If you're looking to earn merits, you're going to have to step up the quality of your writing--not only its style, but its content.  What you write has to be factually correct and also relevant.  Don't post stuff you pull out of your ass and then sit back and wait for the merit to come in.  Others have tried just that, and it just doesn't work.

I'm guessing this is the whole point of this thread, promotion of trading sites.

I'm no expert on stable coins, but I wasn't aware you were actually able to make a profit by trading them.  And though I'm having a hard time understanding what OP's method is, I get the impression that you could probably make as much or more of a profit just speculating on altcoins in the usual way--which doesn't involve bringing stablecoins into the equation.

They seem to have gotten hit as bad or worse than bitcoin itself has--and the slaughter could have been much worse, but altcoins are seriously down for the year if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not sure when they're going to start to recover.  And yeah, all of that was due to the viral outbreak.

This situation can't continue on forever, as that doesn't match the pattern of previous outbreaks.  So whenever this ends, it'll be a good thing for bitcoin--and I'm happy it's maintaining a price above $7k right now.  I figured bitcoin would have gotten hit hard and remained below $5k or so.  Anything above that is music to my ears.

I'm sorry, but all of those bullet points sound like complete gobbledygook to me, and my guess is they're intended to confuse and/or mislead investors--just like most crap coming out of investment firms.

No it isn't, and no they're not.  Don't believe everything you read without first viewing it through the lens of a hardened skeptic.  If you don't already have such a lens, you'll develop one the longer you're into bitcoin and the more nonsense like this you read.

Ah, that's what I was wondering as well--and if bitcoin ownership was illegal in Iran I would have suggested that you just forget about it.

And yes, it's a pain in the ass to buy bitcoin if you want to do it anonymously and have a healthy mistrust of people.  You could check out the Currency Exchange section of the forum, but unless you have a reputation there aren't a lot of people willing to accept payment methods like PayPal and others.  I've never bought or sold bitcoin in person, but that's something you might want to look into.  Good luck in your quest, bro.

I agree--it looks sloppy as hell, but at this point anyone creating a thread in that section (for example) almost has to use icons and capital letters and whatever else they can get away with just so their thread title isn't less obnoxious than all the others. 

Those ANN sections are on ignore for me, so I don't have to be exposed to all that nonsense, but people still try to "spice up" their thread titles using code for bold letters (which fails, but you can still see they tried), all CAPS, and whatever else.  I wouldn't be opposed to getting rid of icons for titles altogether, but that's sort of a low-priority problem for Theymos I'm sure.

That could be it, or it might not.  When you're dealing with YouTube, there's no telling exactly why your video(s) are removed.  Sometimes they seem to do it according to their whims, with no apparent reason that the average person would find rational.

I don't watch a lot of crypto vids, so this isn't excactly impacting me directly, but it sucks for a lot of people when Youtube starts doing this.  I had a feeling YT was just doing a dress rehearsal a few months ago when they were taking down crypto content (to gauge reaction), and I figured they wouldn't stop unless there was a major groundswell of opposition. 

All those scenarios you laid out may have some merit to them, but it all boils down to the answer to the above--and yes, the coronavirus outbreak is basically the main cause for a lot of things lately, including bitcoin's price.  I don't think there's any good way to quantify the effects, but they're real nonetheless

I've always thought that there haven't been enough data points regarding the halvings and their influence on bitcoin's price.  It isn't as though there necessarily needs to be a correlation between the mining rewards and what the price has to be.  And in any event, I think the viral outbreak has overwhelmed most if not all of the gains bitcoin might have received because of the upcoming halving.

But we'll see.  That halving hasn't happened quite yet.

That was my first idea here.  I've never stored crypto on paper wallets or really any other type of cold storage, but the Ledger fulfills basically all the same functions--and it's practical if you want to mobilize the coins eventually.  And as we Leger owners know, you can store a ton of altcoins on it and keep them safe as long as the seed phrase is in a secure location (and that's something you have to worry about no matter how you do your cold storage).

Ugh.  I wouldn't use Jaxx or any other of those kinds of wallets.  I really think a hardware wallet is the best way to go.